The basic of a Musical Career and SNGU by A. Tachtsi

Thank you Annette for giving me this article here.... :)

THE BASICS OF A MUSICAL CAREER and SNGU

by Annette Tachtsi

The way that goes up in the charts is a crooked one. If you do the right moves at the right time, you'll overtake even the fastest, one by one. But I find it useful to state the first rule now "Be patient. This is a marathon, not a sprint."

I should say in advance that this article contains both known facts and my inferences depending on my own experiences and observations. The latter of course shouldn’t be taken as facts, please consider them only as hypotheses and things that should be verified by your own experiences. Trial and error is the best way to learn.

Although the target of this guideline is the beginners, it may also help you to remind some points you may be overlooking. It is a pretty long article, I won’t blame you if you get bored reading it :) But you know how it is; once you start an idea leads another.

Your Musical Career:

To start a musical career you should either create an artist or join a band. As soon as you feel ready, you should create your artist and start touring around the world with your band. Some prefer to skill up first and then start the world tour, but the sooner the better. Your artist can not gain fame without regular shows. Make a tour plan to include all the cities in 56 days; a Popyear. Until you learn to manage your health and mood, it would be acceptable to give a show every 2 or 3 days. Do not visit a city more than once in 56 days; it won't help your fame further.

The skills that should be learned and improved as soon as possible are;

1) The skill related to your genre

2) Basic Yoga or Basic Martial Arts (to be able to manage your health & mood)

To improve the skill related to your genre is of crucial importance. It will help

a) Practicing fully and faster your songs

b) Making better records

c) Doing better the genre events in your shows

I will be mentioning the importance of these three things later on.

You will have to choose two stage roles for yourself (like lead singer / bas guitarist) and improve the related skills. You should give priority to the first stage role you choose, after the last tweaks its importance is greater than the secondary role. When composing your songs you should include your stage roles as dominant instruments of the song. If you are a crowded band, it's better to add the first stage roles of the members as the dominant instruments you choose while composing. Do not use instruments other than your stage roles on your songs; it will decrease the performance you’ll get from the song on your shows.

Give your newbie and experience points to your IQ and Musical Talent. Do not waste them on improving your mood and health. The better your IQ is, the faster you learn and teach skills. The better your musical talent is, the better you compose songs and record tracks. When these two are maxed (my advice is increasing your IQ first), then you may want to use your XP’s on other attributes. I would recommend increasing your charms after these, but it's your choice. You can raise your looks with plastic surgeries in the future when you have enough money. The XP’s can also be used to improve skill or compose songs. But their effect is lower than one update you spend on these. Once all your attributes are perfect, you will be using your XP’s for composing or improving a skill. An XP’s effect is higher when spend on the first * of a skill and decreases gradually. So it’s a good idea to use them for the first 2*s. They don’t work above 5*s. The only way to go beyond 5* you will have to teach the related skill, which will be mentioned later on.

The most important thing in your shows is the quality of your songs. Without being able to compose high quality songs, you won't be able to raise much your show ratings. You should improve basic lyrics and basic composing skills to be able to compose better songs. Adding one or two advanced composing skills (composing crowd-pleasers, composing floor fillers etc.) to these is believed to be helpful in composing good songs. It is also believed that using the same subgenre on every song will hurt the quality of the songs you compose next, that’s why people prefer to skill up in two advanced composing skills. I am not sure of this though, it may be a superstition.

The popularity of the song you play on your shows affects its rating. Once you start playing a fresh song, its rating will be rising in time as its popularity rises and starts to decrease as the song wears. When the popularity bar is read, it’s time to replace this song with a new one.

You will have to cover songs until you are able to fill your repertoire with your own songs. Remember, the 3*s you get from your own song is better than 3*s you get from a cover. But, you have to use them for a while to start your musical career as soon as possible. It’s not a shame to cover songs; even the best musicians you see around once did this. Besides you won’t be able to compose high quality songs at the very beginning, so the best way is to use covers.

The quality and the popularity of the cover song you add to your repertoire determine the performance you get from it on your shows. But don't fill your repertoire with high popularity songs, their popularity will be decreasing soon. Try to choose the high quality songs from top bands’ newly released singles, their popularity will be raising soon. However you may want to add also a couple of songs having high popularity to use as encores. You may check radio charts for this. When your artist power bar gets to 100%, you can use it to full the practice of all the songs in your repertoire. But until then, you will have to do long jamming sessions. Once you fully practice all the songs in your repertoire, then it will be enough to jam every 2-3 days. Actually while I have been writing this article a new tweak came which made the practice of the songs longer so most probably it would be enough to jam once a week from now on.

Another thing that you should pay attention while choosing the covers you'll use is the dominant instruments used in them. Try to choose the songs that have or include your own stage roles as dominant instruments; it may not be easy to find high quality songs having only your stage roles as dominant instruments but at least try.

How to design a show:

Add 8 - 14 songs to your play list. The # of events you use shouldn’t be more than the songs on the play list. If you have, say 10 songs in your play list then use at most 12 events. 10 songs - 10 events or 10 songs - 11 events will be a good choice. If you use more, than the system will give you a penalty and say you haven't played enough songs on the show. The common belief is it's better to align your set list in a one event-one song or two events-two songs order in order to keep the audience pleasure high. When you play 13 songs, the system message says that you played enough songs on the show, but I haven't observed a big benefit of it. If you are using covers it will be easier to put 13 songs but when it comes to your own songs, playing 10 songs of your own is better than playing 10 songs + 3 covers.

It is announced that the new system gives a bonus to your show performance if you use genre events. At the beginning using generic events would be beneficiary for you, since there are some that don't require specific skills. Basic Showmanship skill will help you doing these events better. As you raise your skills, use all of the events of your own genre. This will make 6 events, you’ll need to add 6 more events to them (depending on the # of songs you play as mentioned before). If you have another genre skill, I advise to use this genre’s events. This is not a proven fact but I believe the effect of them are like genre events => other genre events > generic events. The system may be working in two ways, whether genre events are slightly rated higher (which is not visible all the time, you see there 3*s but it may be getting 3.5*s) or the effect of the rating a genre event gets helps further in the final performance.

Another recent tweak made the stage events that require 2 skills to be rated higher compared to the events that require one skill. It makes sense, since you will have to work harder to get a higher rating from a one-skill event. And also crowded bands are now rated lower compared to soloists in stage events.

There are not absolute facts in this thing, you will have to try many different set lists like a puzzle until you find the one that best fits your current skills and keep going to revise it as you continue to improve different skills. Check their ratings after every show and be sure to order both the songs and events from worst to best. Cranking up the volume near the end of the show is a good idea, but don’t forget to wear your ear plugs :) If not, this will end up with tinnitus which will hurt your health a little. The spectacular stage entrance also is one of the events you may want to use; it gets good rating when playing at high ambition.

The system will allow you to add encores after you leave the stage if the audience pleasure is high enough. The lower your city fame is, the higher your chance to do 2 - 3 encores is. Don't be shy; give the audience what they want. The most important thing is, your next encore should be better than your previous one (quality and the popularity step in here.) If the originality of the song you choose as an encore is too low, there is a chance that the audience doesn’t like it.

Boosted Shows:

Boosted shows raise your show rating 1 to 2 levels. You need to have some fuel on your artist power bar to be able to do it. Your power bar’s percentage rises a little every day, and after better shows it fills up faster. Your first single and album helps a lot too.

There are two ways to boost a show:

1) Setting performance ambition to Boosted: It gives a general boost on your show. It needs 100% filled power bar.

2) Boosting audience mood as a special event on your show: It is a stage event that can be added to your set list. A percentage above 50% or so would be enough to do it. If you have a nearly full power bar you will be able to use it in two consecutive shows. It’s better to place this event near the end of your show, it’s a 6* event. The best way is to place it in between your encores if you play two or after your last encore if the audience still chants for more. As you start getting 6*s from your encores I guess it doesn’t differ much whether you place it before or after them. It is something that should be tested.

It’s a good idea to save your option of boosting a show to a competition you may win.

Song Writing:

As stated earlier, whether you like it or not, you will have to compose songs. First to release singles and albums, this will be mentioned later on, and second for good shows. The importance of your musicality and the related skills has been mentioned earlier. Another thing that you should pay attention is your health and mood while starting a new song and while composing. The common belief is that the engine takes them as parameters while you start a new song. People also believe that the place where you get your update affects the song’s quality. The Popmundo help section says it’s a good idea to stay at a home or at a hotel while composing. The only thing I can tell as a fact is that you get higher progress on the bars when you compose at home or at a hotel. Other things are hypotheses but you won’t lose anything if you start the song with high health and mood, especially health.

You may want to get some seeds to improve the quality of your songs. You may get them by busking, partying all night at a club or by horoscopes. Busking hurts both health and mood and partying all night hurts health.

You need some *s in basic astrology skill in order to use zodiacs. Or your friends may produce some horoscopes for you. Once you get “It’s a good time for songwriting” notice, there is a chance that you get a seed at the 24^th, 48^th or 72^nd hour after if you are composing. I also believe whether you get a seed or not, getting that notification from a horoscope may be improving the quality of the song you are composing. It doesn’t have a negative effect definitely so do it.

Seeds improve the quality but hurt the originality of the songs. The originality of the song comes to play if you will use them as encores. The higher, the better. Try to use the seeds while they are fresh. Their quality and hence the effect they may give drops in time.

Stage Skills:

After you are done with the genre skill, instrument skills and composing skills, I recommend giving priority to the following ones (I assume you’ll have 5* basic manners after completing the Mother/Newbie Tour)

- Basic Showmanship: It will help you in generic events. Its effect has lessened but it’s still an important skill

- Basic Sex Appeal: It definitely helps you on stage.

Basic Makeup will also increase your stage performance, it helps increasing your looks before your shows. The common belief is Basic Fashion, Basic Dancing and Basic Modeling are the other skills that have a general influence on the stage performance. But I think improving these 3 skills can be postponed at a later time. I think checking your genre events and start improving the skills they require is more important.

Stage Equipment:

Buying stage equipment will enhance your show performance up to 2 levels. I recommend to wait until you buy a tour bus big enough to get 4* stage equipment. A rating below 4* won’t help much. You will need at least a Noisy Old Lorry to be able to put 5* stage equipment in. You will have to renew your equipment when they wear.

There are other combinations but here is a list of 5* equipment:

1 Stroboscope 800W

10 Loudspeaker 2000W 20,000W

4 Subwoofer 2000W 8,000W

2 Thunder Stormer 4000W 8,000W

2 Bubble Machine 250W 500W

2 Foam Cannon 2000W 4,000W

1 Backdrop with Band Logo - Supersize (Black) 3,000W

5 Supersize Rack 7500W 37,500W

1 Projector with canvas 500W

1 Plasmascreen 500W

2 Smoke Machine 500W 1,000W

1 Advanced Light Control System 3,000W

1 Deluxe Sound Mixing Table 2,000W

4 Large Monitor Speaker 2,000W

Total: 90,800W

Be sure to book your shows at clubs with a power capacity equal to or higher than your stage equipment’s.

Artist Crew:

As soon as you can afford one, hire a publicist. He will help you increasing your market shares. You will need a roadie per 10K watt of your stage equipment. So if you have a 5* stage equipment you will need to hire 10 of them. Personal assistants are believed to help decreasing the health loss you get after your shows. So it’s a good idea to hire one as soon as possible.

Complete others in time as your artist have enough cash. Try to keep their mood on perfect with weekly bonuses.

Riders:

Add all as they keep unlocked. Contact with club owners or CEO’s to agree on paying them. Non paid riders will hurt your show rating.

Competitions & Hype:

Hype is the bar near your band’s name on the rankings and it is filled as you participate and win competitions where you compete with at least 10 bands. If there are less than 10 bands that completed the competition it serves nothing. Winning competitions also further help your city fames. There are 3 types of competitions classified on the # of bands playing

Local Showdown: 10 – 20 Bands

National Competition: 20 - 30 Bands

World Championship: More than 30 Bands

The hype that you get when you win a world championship is bigger than that of a national competition and the same is true for national competitions and local showdowns.

So what is hype? Why do I need to win competitions? Hype helps you rise among your competitors, but its effect is temporary, I mean it is consumed to keep you where you are or to move you up, you will need to refuel it to get advantage of it.

Do not join competitions until you have high enough show performance.

Records & Singles & Albums:

You should have a contract to be able to release any singles / full length albums. You should give importance to the references of the record company you’ll choose, check out the current bands signed with their studios. The share you have on the contract is of secondary importance compared to the experience of the company you choose. A share around 55-65% is reasonable. Don’t jump on high share contract offers.

You won't be able to sell singles in cities where you have less than dreadful fame. And you may only raise your city fames by touring. When you have dreadful fame in 4-5 cities, it's time for you to release your first single. And when the first one is released, you should continue to release one every 4 weeks. The best time to release singles is the 22nd and the 50th days of the Popo year. 50th day of the year is the Christmas week and the album sales are boosted this day. Although Santa Claus won't be running around that much anymore as he used to do in the past (before they tweaked the Christmas sales was 50% boosted), they say that there will continue to be a slight bonus, which I guess is in between 5-10% depending on what I observed after the first sales the tweak went live.

In order to be able to release singles and full length albums, you have to record your tracks. Make sure that the practice of the song is 100% and choose the best studio your artist can afford. Your record company will be providing you discounts on their studios depending on your contract. You will most probably using them for free. The genre strength of the studio is not as important as the quality of the locale. If you can find a high quality studio with a strong genre strength of your own genre, of course that is preferable.

Another important factor that affects the final quality of the record is your mood at the end of the session. Use plates of oysters or fancy meal to fill your mood bar temporarily. Low health may be hurting it also.

It is very important to find a record producer to be present in the studio while recording your track. You may find 5* & 10* record producers list on the forums and may ask them helping you out. There are also studios that provide 10* record producers, but they are usually expensive; you may be able to use them after your artist has enough cash. They are usually located at crowded cities and you will recognize them by their names like “XX 10 Record Producer”.

Now it's possible to invite producers to the recording sessions, but it's enough for him / her to be present at the studio before the end of the record session. The recording system is tweaked recently to make the related genre skill of the producer to be important. So if you are a crowded band, it will be a good choice to make one of your band mates to have the production skill. If the producer is not a band mate it’s better not to invite the producer if he/she doesn’t have at least 5* in your genre skill. My observations are for now this system doesn't work properly, which I hope will be fixed up soon. Then I will come back and revise this part :)

Another thing that you should pay attention while releasing your single is to ensure that your songs have higher popularity compared to their fame in the release time. A popularity around 15% - 20% (be careful I'm talking about fresh songs, I mean the songs whose popularity is rising not decreasing) will be best for your sales. You may raise the popularity of your songs in 2 ways

1) Playing them at your shows (Play the songs to approximately 40-50K audience)

2) Releasing videos

3) Both

Depending on your contract, your record company will pay the costs of one or two of the videos you filmed. (How to film a video will be mentioned later on). A good video will raise the popularity of your songs to around 15-20% in 4-5 days. An above average video used to give 5% 3% 2% 2% 1% popularity rise consecutively per day during the 5 days after it is released. After the video tweak these percentages are a bit lower. I will note them and revise this part in the future.

Trial and error and observation are the best ways to find the best popularity / fame ratio that should be used. And also contact your record company; they will give you some good advice about it.

Last thing I should add about the videos is the common belief is releasing a video for the A side of your single will also slightly help your single sales. You may release two videos as well but this wont help further with the sales. It will only help raising the song’s popularity. And videos also help your songs to enter the radio charts (don’t worry I’ll mention the radio charts just after this topic), since the popularity of the song is a parameter here with its quality. Talk to your record company if you want to release a second video, the usual practice is your first video’s releasing cost is paid by your record company.

The subgenre (the one you are selecting after your genre while adding your songs to your repertoire) of the tracks released on singles affects your market segment popularity. Check out the current subgenre popularities of your genre from the community section and use the popular ones for your singles. You may want to use other subgenres for the additional tracks in your albums to raise your low market segment popularities.

Be sure to send your single a reasonable time before the time you want it to be released. Contact your record company about this issue. In the beginning 10 days would be enough to order enough copies but as your fame grows, you will need more than 3 weeks for that.

Albums:

The full length albums should be released every 4 months. Release one as soon as you have 8-12 songs recorded. You need at least 8 songs but releasing the album with 12 songs will be the best. You will already be composing 8 songs during 4 months to release a single once in a month. You should add 4 new songs to these. This will also help you keeping your repertoire fresh.

The quality of the tracks in the albums has a crucial importance. The popularity is not a parameter here but the fame is.

Releasing singles and albums is very important to rise in the lists. Especially releasing albums on time is almost a must if you want to play to the top.

Finally, whether it’s a single or an album, you shouldn’t release it before the specified time, i.e. you should wait 4 weeks to release your next single and 2 months to release your next album. The only exception to that are multiple releases. Some bands prefer to release multiple singles at a time in order to release all their tracks with singles (remember you should release an album every 2 months and add 4 additional tracks to the ones you released with singles which are practically not used in singles) to ensure all of their tracks are played on radios.

Radio Charts:

Only tracks that are released on singles are played on radios. And your tracks that are played on the radios affect your ranking. I mentioned earlier that some people prefer to do multiple releases to ensure all of their tracks enter the radio charts. The quality and the popularity are the criteria that determine whether a song will be played on radios or not and its ranking. On the other hand, videos help your tracks to be picked up since they raise the popularity. This is the idea behind releasing videos for both of your songs in the single. But the quality of the videos you release is important for your career (in what way? not know yet), i.e. you will have to spend your updates on rehearsing the scenes. So you need to specify a strategy here.

Filming a Video:

You will want to find a director while filming your video. It will help the quality. If you can not find one, choose bus stations or airports of the crowded cities, it’s highly probable that there is someone with the required skills there who will automatically be assigned as a director at the end of the session. Just as the record producers tweak, now it’s important that the one directing your video has your genre skill. Again, if you are a crowded band, you may assign one of your band mates to become a record producer and another one a video director.

And the new tweaks made it almost a must to rehearse videos you film if you are a successful band. Unrehearsed videos will hurt your artist and won't help you much. I still don’t know in which way they will hurt cause I haven’t released any crappy videos nor I saw someone doing it, I even don’t know whether this implementation has been made yet cause they said in the community “In a couple of weeks it will also be bad for your career to release crappy music videos” a couple of weeks ago.

You should set your priority rehearsing scenes and select the scene you want to rehearse afterwards. Do not forget to select the scene if you don’t want to lose updates. Try to stay at home while rehearsing scenes; you may use Youth Hostels (check English General Forum Thread # 721962.1) while rehearsing during the tour. Cause you get 9% rise in your practice bar when you get the update at an apartment and 6% rise per update everywhere else.

Improving your Basic Acting skill will help you to get better performance on the videos. This skill also helps some of the events you use on your shows, so it is on my “To Improve” list.

Media Coverage:

This is a new concept introduced during the last tweak storm. You will have to spend a portion of your updates to talk to media to increase your coverage in cities you visit which will play an important role in your single sales. Again, since this is a new tweak not in effect yet, I will come back and revise its effect on single sales afterwards. Basic Media Manipulation skill will bring some benefit while talking to media and the band leader should be talking to media more often. There are also other advanced skills that will be helpful, which I suppose are not effective yet.

You will have to make a good plan on how much of your updates you’ll spend on talking to media depending on your strategy. If you are a beginner, my advice is to give your priority to improve skills and compose songs for a world tour or two. You are never done with skills, there are always new ones to improve but when you are done with basic ones and your band’s fame starts to grow, then you should use some of your updates to talk to the media if you want strong sales, which I think you would want since I guess you are eager enough to be successful that you have read this article until here and still survive.

Artist Cash:

Do not withdraw it. You will need every cent in the very beginning. Save them to be able to buy a tour bus, it will make things a lot easier while traveling. You will most probably be able to buy one near the end of your first tour around the world. Until then you will have to hitchhike, all you need to do is to go to a travel route and set your priority to hitchhike until someone takes you. Or if you are a vip member you can use your personal cars to travel which is a vip feature unfortunately. Do not prefer bicycles though :)

Teaching:

After you have 5* in basic skills, and want to go further on your career, teaching skills will be very helpful. You can only teach your 5* skills. Basic teaching and advanced pedagogy are the skills that you should have and improve in order to teach effectively. With 5* in both, you will get 10% rise per update while teaching an apprentice and 6% rise in both while teaching two apprentices at a time (assuming you’ll have perfect IQ until then). Every EUREKA brings a 25% progress in your skill until 8*. After that the progress decreases to 20% and 10%. The exact figures are as follows;

5.25-5.50-5.75-6.00

6.25-6.50-6.75-7.00

7.25-7.50-7.75-7.95

8.15-8.35-8.55-8.65-8.75-8.85-8.95

9.05-9.10- and so on (5% progress between 9^th & 10^th *s)

This is the case for teaching 1 or 2 apprentices at a time. If you teach 3 apprentices at the same time you would get 20% after 5*. I recommend not to teach more than 2 apprentices at a time.

Extra stars in basic teaching and advanced pedagogy will increase the percentage you get per apprentice per update. The 10% rise will remain the same if you teach one apprentice. You may go up to 10% progress per apprentice per update while teaching 2 apprentices at a time if you have 10* in both of these skills. Not necessarily 10*s but having more than 6*s in these skills will also increase the 6% you get per update.

What to Teach?

Well actually it depends whether you are a solo or you are the member of a crowded band. Whether you are a solo or not extra *s in the skills that I stated as important at the beginning is beneficiary; i.e. the genre skill and the stage roles. Extra stars in the genre skill will help you better performing in the recordings and having better ratings while doing genre events. Extra stars in the stage roles will help you better perform your repertoire and will increase your personal rating on the shows.

The benefits of extra stars in composing skills are controversial. Since the songwriting system it self is random, or seems to be random, this issue is still on darkness. Some claims it helps the final quality of the song, others claim it has an effect on how fast you compose.

If you are a crowded band, it may be helpful that one of your band mates has extra *s in record production. And it is a good idea to share the show events and add some extra stars to the skills they require.

Stark Naked Gypsy University:

If you are reading this article, either you are a part of this great community, or you just heard about it and decided to check out the website. With Kris’s words, the founder of SNGU, it is “A group of traveling musicians that roam Popmundo”. Yes we are touring around the world endlessly with our friends always by our side.

Joining us is a good way to start your musical career. Besides the fact touring alone is not that fun, SNGU will help you advance on your musical career. You will have the opportunity to tour and learn/teach at the same time. You will absolutely find some good people willing to help you out and will make a lot of great friends. You will find good mentors for some further advices on your career. There are record producers and video directors among us who are gladly helping you with your recordings and videos. Ah and lovely doctors who will be curing you when you are infected and alchemists brewing your herbs.

After sitting on my ass in LA for more than 100 days totally blind, I joined SNGU and at the same time started my musical career and I am part of it for almost a real year. I believe sharing my experiences will give you some hints and help you decide what your target in this game is. So what did I gain?

- First of all, good mentors to ask my questions when I needed help and great bands inspiring me for my own success

- A lot of fun to keep touring without break, which you know is a must if you want your artist to gain fame

- Masters who were teaching me during the tour and apprentices to teach when I become a master. And also some underground skillsthat can only be learned from a master

- A good and reliable contract with Naked Gypsy Studios, which also helped to record my tracks in Naked Gypsy studios of perfect quality for free. There is one almost in every city. It is important when you are not able to afford the rent with your artist cash.

- 5* record producers and 5* video directors among gypsy friends who gladly helped me recording my tracks and filming my videos

- And of course great friendships.

Now when I turn and look at back, I am regretful that I haven’t heard about SNGU sooner. So yes, if you are still wandering out there, you should just come and check the life with us.

---

I tried to cover the basics of a musical career. There may be some details I skipped unintentionally. I will try to keep up to date this guideline as new tweaks come.

DO READ the Popmundo help section, it's full of useful information. Try to follow the forums, you may always find some further hints no matter how much you know.

As a last note let me give a personal advice, always ask questions but do not take answers as absolute facts, try to experience and observe things on your own and do not fear exploring different solutions. Creativity is always the key to differentiation.

My special thanks to;

Kris, to whom I owe many of the things I know and who helped on this article as an editor and publisher,

And Danny Keene (R.I.P) who used to gladly share his valuable knowledge